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Here are some helpful tips on how to measure and present usability, and (more importantly) improve your UX process!

Usability

Whether you’re in the early stages of investigating problems to be solved, or you’re user-testing higher fidelity prototypes, “usability” is an important aspect to consider at every stage of the design process.

According to Nielsen Norman group, usability is an attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.

“Accessibility” is a term which falls under the umbrella of usability; it refers to an attribute through which “people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with and contribute to the web”.

5 Qualities of Usability

Usability is defined by five quality components:

Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?

Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?

Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?

Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?

How to Present Usability Results

These three tips will help you present and communicate your usability results to team members, stake holders, and clients.

1. Give Context

Give a background summary to quickly brief your audience on the subject matter. Show relevant visuals to accompany qualitative or quantitative results gives the conclusion more impact and reminds your audience the key insights of your findings and makes them more believable and influential.

2. Make Changes Actionable

Often the change which is clear to the researcher may go through several communication channels. Avoid any chance for confusion and spell out recommended changes. People often don’t read through long reports, so a summary of actionable changes by topic makes scanning easier.

3. Prioritize

Reporting the severity of the problems found is a great way to help your product team prioritize changes. As every change requires a trade-off of time and resources, it is helpful to give your audience a high level view of what must be changed vs. what are minor issues.

Conclusion

Understanding how to measure and present user research findings well is key to driving change in your product. Following these best practice guidelines is a good way to ease communication between users and project teams.